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For the past month I have been lucky to be a part of the TELUS program dubbed “10 Best of BlackBerry Q10” with the Twitter hashtag #10BestOfBBQ10. The folks at TELUS were kind enough to send me a brand new TELUS BlackBerry Q10 along with an activated TELUS line and let me play with it so I could review it and let you, my loyal readers, and the internet at large know what I think of it. Before I go on, I want to be clear about a few things: 1. I really was excited to play with this device and wanted to love it and make it my primary phone from the moment I got the email from TELUS.

2. I don’t really care about apps beyond my core of email, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and a web browser. Having Foursquare and some other apps is nice and all but it isn’t an absolute necessity and I would gladly give them up for a physical keyboard on a device which functioned superbly.

3. I love Swype for Android because of the ease of typing but I choose it over all other keyboard options available for Android because of its editing capabilities. The easy way I can use keyboard shortcuts to cut, copy, and paste reminds me of my PC and my BlackBerry keyboard which both have shortcuts for those functions. On any BlackBerry before the Z10 and the Q10 (referred to as a “Legacy BlackBerry”) this was accomplished by a few different shortcuts which BlackBerry helpfully lists here. On a PC it’s the old reliable CTRL-X, CTRL-C, & CTRL-V. That, coupled with the trackpad-replacing “Edit Keyboard Layer (PIC)” which Swype has means it is my go to and you’ll be hard pressed to convince me to switch to another keyboard.

The final straws for me with my 9900 was when I got the black clock of waiting when the phone had freshly booted and I was writing an email. The device slowing down during such a mundane task was too much coupled with the camera being so horrible I couldn’t take a picture of an article in the newspaper because it’s fixed focus lens couldn’t handle close up shots. When those 2 things happened I gave up, threw in the towel, called it quits, and broke up with BlackBerry.

For all those who are too lazy to read a long review here it is in three sentences: The TELUS HSPA/LTE network in Toronto is great providing very good coverage and speeds. All in all, the BlackBerry Q10 Read more…

Looks I will be heading to another event tomorrow this time, a tech event. The newest addition to the Sony Ericsson Xperia line, the Android powered “Sony Ericsson Xperia ray” will be officially launched tomorrow evening in Toronto by Sony Ericsson Canada and Telus. Telus will be having the exclusive rights to sell this new device in Canada.

You can follow all the goings on of the party tomorrow with the hashtag #XperiaRayLaunch on Twitter.

Now, on to the actual device. (Can we even call them “phones” anymore?) It comes in at a slim 9.4 mm according to the tech specs from Sony Ericsson and its frame is made of aluminum. Its screen, like all of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia devices, uses the enhanced contrast and richer colors via the ‘Reality Display’ of the Mobile BRAVIA Engine. (Yes, essentially the same BRAVIA technology as you have in your Sony TVs). It has a 8.1 MP back camera with Exmor R for mobile technology which is what is used in Sony’s camera division and a front facing 1.3 MP camera for video calling services such as Skype. It also runs Android Gingerbread right out the box which is a welcome change as the newer versions of Android have so many more features available.

I am looking forward to playing with this device tomorrow night as it looks like a very interesting beast of a phone in a small package. While I haven’t had a chance to play with the device itself as of yet, my friend Daniel Bader of MobileSyrup has already written a full review of the device available here http://mobilesyrup.com/2011/10/31/telus-sony-ericsson-xperia-ray-review/. However, after reading Daniel’s review I will say this about the phone – it look like it’ll be a really hot phone to be carrying in your pocket once Telus releases it. I say this because of two things which stood out for me reading Daniel’s review:

The battery life has me salivating. From Daniel’s MobileSyrup review “The Xperia ray comes with a relatively large 1500mAh battery for the device’s size, and we got excellent, multi-day battery life as a result.” And I can be fairly certain that Daniel used the phone as I would so those words have me impressed quite impressed.

Daniel gave it an 8/10 overall. Like I said above, I know Daniel put this phone through its paces because I know Daniel and if he is giving a phone an 8/10 that means this thing is well worth looking at more than once.

I swear I am not biased because I share the same first name as Daniel does…OK, maybe a little bit of bias but read his review and you’ll see how thorough he is!

Looking forward to being introduced to this little device tomorrow in real life. I’ll let all y’all know what I think of it and the event via Twitter. If there are any questions about the phone you want me to ask Sony Ericsson or specific aspects of the phone you’d like me to inspect IRL let me know in the comments below.

Until then, for more information on this phone and for the price when it is announced: